The ability to download torrent files directly to your phone is enormously useful, and you’ll quickly wonder how you lived without it.

Bittorrent Free

Features:

Basic torrent downloading functionality works well, and the app seems generally quick and responsive. The app supports WiFi-only downloading, and upload and download caps to save bandwidth. I was disappointed to note that the battery saving feature was reserved for the pro version of the software only.

Interface:

The interface of the Bittorrent client is attractive and modern, employing a lot of white space, clean fonts and iconography, drop shadows, and generally strong visual design. By and large, this Bittorrent client is a joy to use, as you might expect.

Ads:

The free version of the Bittorrent client does have adds (two bars, one at the top, and one at the bottom), but they’re largely unobtrusive.

aTorrent

Features:

aTorrent is reasonably feature rich, and it downloaded my test file (a collection of Mark Twain’s short stories) without a hitch. From the settings page, you can control download limits, WiFi-only downloading, and power-saving options. The app is generally responsive and functional.

Interface:

Unfortunately, the interface of aTorrent was significantly less clean and functional than that of its competitors. The options weren’t as well laid out, and the formatting was busier, more poorly laid out, and just generally harder to use.

Ads:

On the up-side, the app comes with only one unobtrusive banner advertisement, which does not appear on all screens.

Vuze

Features:

Vuze is reasonably usable; it has all of the major features, minus the ability to disable downloading when the battery is low. The app itself can be a little sluggish when you’re starting it up or adding torrent files, but seems to download at a reasonable speed once you get past that.

Interface:

Vuze’s interface is clean, if not pretty. The gray-white-and-blue, whitespace-heavy look is easy on the eyes, but the layout of elements doesn’t feel intuitive, and some of the screens are less well designed than others. It isn’t bad enough to be a problem, but some parts of the interface definitely feel a little cluttered.

Ads:

Vuze doesn’t have any advertisements at all, which is a refreshing change and might be enough to sell you on the app on its own.

Apps to Avoid

While going through apps for this review, I discovered a couple apps that are probably best avoided, for functional and security-related reasons:

Which App Wins?

There’s a case to be made for each of the three mentioned here. Bittorrent is the nicest looking and easiest to navigate. aTorrent is the most feature rich. Vuze doesn’t have advertisements.

For me, not having to worry about accidentally tapping on an ad and getting yanked away from what I’m doing is enough that Vuze is my torrent client of choice. However, for most people, I suspect that aTorrent gives the best overall value proposition.

Did we miss your favorite torrent client? Let us know in the comments!

tTorrent with limitations in free version as you mentioned gives me the power of sequential download of a file. so I could start a torrent of a movie and start watching the movie right away. Also the download limit is enough which enables me to do this. That's why its my fav.